Viral ad star’s message to doubters

by Jack Gramenz

1st Apr 2020 9:06 AM

An online stock commentator who projected a fitness company would see its share prices plummet following an unfortunately viral piece of advertising has been savagely owned by a Twitter account that hired the actor from the commercial.

Peloton is an at-home fitness company that predominantly sells stationary bikes and subscriptions to streamed workout routines.

The company has been growing in popularity in recent years, but attracted much criticism prior to Christmas for a controversial ad where a man buys his wife an exercise bike.

Around that time the stock commentator Citron Research predicted that unless Peloton "makes a machine that works out for you" followers would be laughing at the company's value by the same time this year.

$PTON 2020 price tgt $5. Unless $PTON makes a machine that works out for you we will be laughing at $10 bil valuation in a year. MUST see chart on homepage of story https://t.co/OHkyRfzIKn

It didn't end up taking as long for that call to be proven wrong, thanks to the global coronavirus pandemic that has forced many to stay in their homes as gyms are closed.

This is obviously very good for the business of selling at home exercise equipment.

The pandemic restrictions means some people now have a lot more time on their hands, which gave one Twitter account plenty of time to come up with the perfect way to "own" Citron for its bad call, by hiring the woman from the commercial to deliver a video message telling the stock commentators how foolish they were.

Monica Ruiz appeared as the "Peloton Wife" in the commercial, which Peloton presumably paid her at least the market rate for a commercial actor, if not more for.

But thanks to the website Cameo, which allows you to hire pretty much anyone to say pretty much anything, one online jokester was able to hire Ms Ruiz for the princely sum of $91 to deliver their video message, which she directed towards Citron Research's editor and "activist short seller" Andrew Left.

"Listen, one bad little bit of promotional materials or press isn't gonna kill a company like Peloton, I mean come on … especially right now! You know how many people I know had a bike delivered to them this week alone? People like to work out at home, and people have to work out at home now," Ms Ruiz said in the video, posted by the Typical VC (venture capitalist) account, which appears to straddle the thin line between satire and what's commonly known as "sh*tposting".

Ms Ruiz stresses she can't do actual commercials or endorsements on her cameos but is "happy to send a fun message to you or a friend".

Other celebrities are less strict and will endorse things in their cameos, which has previously been exploited by the Escobar Inc brand to get "celebrity" endorsements for its rebranded foldable phones.

While hiring someone on an app to taunt someone else on a different app could be viewed as the next stage in pandemic isolation boredom, it still remains pretty fun to watch.

Peloton's bounce back after it was "cancelled" for running a bad ad also brings to mind the outrage aimed at Gillette for its "woke" ad that had the same cancelling effects for different reasons and only for around the same amount of time.

If there's one thing for brands to take out of this pandemic it would appear to be that manufacturing products your customers want or need is often more important than whether your faceless brand has the right opinions or not.